In this chapter, book refers to nonfictional technical documents—but not user guides, covered elsewhere. Book design refers to the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various typical components and elements of a nonfictional technical document. Component here refers to actual sections or pages of a book such as the edition notice, the preface, the index, or the front or back cover. Element refers to things that can occur multiple times practically anywhere in a nonfictional technical document, such as headers, footers, tables, illustrations, lists, notices, highlighting, and so on.
This chapter starts with the notion that you might want to write something that extended and technical—but not a user guide. You may even have ideas about publishing it! It provides an overview of the typical components and elements of a printed or PDF nonfiction technical book—the typical content, format, style, and sequence of those components and elements.
Before you begin reading the following, grab a number of nonfiction technical books so that you can compare their content, style, format, and sequencing to what is discussed here.
Front and back covers
Nonfiction technical books usually have nicely designed front covers with all or some or all of the following:
- Publisher name
- Book title
- Artwork
- Author
Here's an example of a Pragmatic Publishers book on AI engineering, publish 2026:
Example of a cover page.
The back cover of hardcopy user guides and manuals is usually very simple. Typically, it contains the book order number, the name of the company with appropriate trademark symbols, a copyright symbol and phrasing as to the ownership of the book, and a statement as to which country the book was printed in. You'll also find bar codes on the back cover. See if your software can generate a bar code—you just access the bar code utility and type in the book order number, and the utility generates the bar code.
Title page
The title page is typically a duplicate of the front cover, but with artwork, color, company or product logos, and slogans. In most book designs, the title page is the sheet of paper within the covers. Some technical publications omit the title page altogether because of the seemingly needless duplication. (And in a print run of 20,000 copies, a single page means a lot!)
Example of a title page.
Edition notice
The edition notice is typically on the basic side of the title page. If the technical publisher is taking the lean-and-green approach and eliminating the title page, the edition notice will appear on the backside of the front cover.
No one likes to read fine print, but take a look at the statements typically included in the edition notice for A Common Sense Approach to AI Engineering, a Pragmatic pProgrammers ublication:
Example of an edition notice
Table of contents
The table of contents (TOC) usually contains at least a second level of detail (the head 1s in the actual text) so that readers can find what they need more precisely. Writers, editors, and book designers typically argue about the sequencing of the TOC. In terms of usability, it's much better to have the TOC as close to the front of the book as possible, if not at the very first of the book. In terms of legalities, however, people worry that all those communication statements, warranties, copyrights, trademarks, and safety notices should come first. In those places where usability wins out, books use every tactic they can to get this legalistic material out of the front matter: warranties are put on separate cards and shrink-wrapped with the book or product; warranties, communication statements, trademarks and other such may be dumped in appendixes.
Example of a table pf contents
Trouble creating a nicely formatted TOC? See Align page numbers in an MSN Word TOC
List of figures
Technical manuals for ordinary users typically don't have lists of figures. In fact, the figures themselves typically do not have full-blown figure titles. But this isn't to say that a list of figures has no place in technical manuals. It all depends on the reader and the reader's needs—and the content of the book as well. If the book contains tables, illustrations, charts, graphs, and other such that readers will want to find directly, the figure list is order.
Preface
The function of the preface is to get readers ready to read the book. It does so by:
- characterizing the content and purpose of the book
- identifying or even briefly describing the product the book supports
- explaining the type of reader for whom the book is meant
- outlining the main contents of the book
- showing any special conventions or terminology used in the book
- providing support and marketing numbers, and other such
In traditional book publishing, the preface comes before the table of contents; but as discussed previously in the table of contents section, technical publishing people want the TOC to come earlier in the book for usability reasons.
Body chapters
Oh yes, and there is actual text in these books—it isn't all front matter! Little else to say here other than most technical books have chapters or sections, and, in some cases, parts. See the chapter on page design for format, style, and design issues for elements such as headers, footers, headings, lists, notices, tables, graphics, cross-references, and highlighting.
Appendixes
As you know, appendixes are for material that just doesn't seem to fit in the main part of a book but can't be left out of the book either. Appendixes are often the place for big unwieldy tables. Some technical publications have things like warranties in the appendixes. In terms of format, an appendix is just like a chapter—except that it is named "Appendix A" or some such, and the headers and footers match that different numbering and naming convention (A-1, A-2, and so on for pages in Appendix A).
Glossary
Some technical publications include a section of specialized terms and their definitions. Notice that most glossaries use a two-column layout. Typically the each term and its definition make up a separate paragraph, with the term lowercased (unless it is a proper name) and in bold, followed by a period, then the definition in regular roman. Notice too that definitions are typically not complete sentences. Good glossary definitions should use the formal-sentence definition technique as described in the definition chapter of this online text. Multiple definitions are typically identified by arabic numbers in parentheses. Glossary paragraphs also contain See references to preferred terms and See also references to related terms.
Index
Indexes are also typically two-column and also contain See references to preferred terms and See also references to related terms. See the chapter on indexing for processes and guidelines for creating good indexes.
Book design and layout
Typically, user guides and manuals produced by hardware and software manufacturers are designed in a rather austere and spartan way. High-tech companies develop new versions and releases of their product sometimes every nine months. In this context, sophisticated design is just not practical. Here are some of the typical layout and design features you'll see:
- Page size is often determined by packaging considerations as well as by standard page sizes available with printing companies. When page size is not a constraint, some companies will use the 8.5 × 11-inch page size—this makes production much easier for writers.
- Pages are typically designed with alternating right and left pages. The footer for the left (even) page starts with the page number and ends with the title of the book. The footer for the right (odd) page starts with the title of the chapter and ends with the page number.
- Practice is mixed on whether page numbering is consecutive throughout the book or by-chapter.
- Unless pages are rather small, the hanging-head design of headings in relation to pages is quite common in technical manuals. The hanging indent is usually one inch to one-and-a-half inches.
- Fonts are often 12-point Times New Roman for body text and Arial for headings. Standard line spacing and word spacing are used. See the chapter on highlighting for other typographical issues.
- Margins are fairly standard, one to two inches all the way around. Typically, an extra half-inch is used on inside margins to allow for binding.
- Typically, color is not used in these manuals and guides, usually out of cost and efficiency considerations.
Note: This concludes the discussion of print-book components. To complete this overview of the design of printed books, see the chapter on page design, which covers elements such as headers and footers, headings, lists, special notices, tables, graphics, highlighting, cross-references, and more.
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